Dana Point Shipyard growing with harbor

Feb. 20, 2014

Updated 4:46 p.m.

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The current 50-ton travel lift at Dana Point Shipyard is not large enough to haul out some of the larger boats in the harbor, but after the $1.6 million upgrade planned by the boatyard's owners, the yard will be able to handle boats up to 90 feet in length. DANA POINT SHIPYARD

The current 50-ton travel lift at Dana Point Shipyard is not large enough to haul out some of the larger boats in the harbor, but after the $1.6 million upgrade planned by the boatyard's owners, the yard will be able to handle boats up to 90 feet in length. DANA POINT SHIPYARD

As recreational boats get bigger, wider and heavier, Dana Point Shipyard is working to get stronger.

This year, the owners have plans to upgrade the yard’s boat haul-out capabilities to an 85-ton lift from its current 50-ton travel lift, meaning boats up to 90 feet in length could be serviced.

In addition, the family-run boatyard has outlined improvements to its water filtration system that will essentially eliminate any water runoff from entering the harbor, and to reconfigure its docks to accommodate the larger boats it hopes to gain as customers once the new lift is installed.

The improvements, estimated to cost $1.6 million, were approved by the California Coastal Commission at its Feb. 13 meeting.

Yard manager Catherine Cope, whose father, Gene Jerry, constructed the boatyard with CB Shannep in 1977, said the improvements will bring the yard into the 21st Century.

“When my father put this place in 35 years ago, there were maybe five boats in the entire harbor that we couldn’t handle,” Cope said.

But since then, boats in Dana Point – and recreational boats in general – have gotten longer and wider, or “beamier” as Cope puts it. Today, Cope estimates about 300 of the 2,400 vessels in Dana Point Harbor are too big to be hauled out at the shipyard, leaving local boat owners no choice but to take their boat to neighboring shipyards in Newport Beach or San Diego for maintenance work.

On top of lost business, project coordinator Steve Morris said the lack of big boat haul out capabilities is a safety concern in the area as well.

“Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a 65-foot boat that got stuck in gear, smashed into the boat behind it and put a big hole in its transom,” Morris said. “It was taking on water and they wanted us to haul it out, but we couldn’t.”

Morris said the boat owner was able to hurry up to Newport Beach to be hauled out before too much water got onboard.

“But emergency situations like that show how important it is for our yard to be able to have those capabilities,” Morris said.

Their current travel lift, which operates like a mobile crane system to pull boats out of the water and onto dry land to be worked on, can handle boats up to about 50 feet in length with about an 18-foot width.

Morris said the new lift, which will cost about $500,000, is expected to handle boats in the 90-foot range.

The yard’s improvement plan comes as the county prepares to start construction on the $140 million Dana Point Harbor revitalization plan, which will eventually move to the waterside where the harbor’s east and west basin slips will be replaced and reconfigured to include more big boat slips.

“The slip mix is changing in the harbor, and we want to make sure we go along with that,” Morris said.

Along with accommodating the bigger boats, Dana Point Shipyard will be bulking up against its environmental impact, adding a quad-chamber filtration system to its current three-stage water clarifying unit. The new system will allow the shipyard to reuse water for boat cleaning and other uses, essentially operating as a closed-loop system.

“If we ever have to discharge into the harbor, like in a very large five-year, 24-hour storm event, we will be meeting all of the water quality benchmarks with this filtration system,” Cope said.

Construction on the landside and water filtration improvements is expected to begin in the next few months while the new docks and travel lift system is expected to get underway following the busy summer boating season.

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